The Good Wife's Guide (Le Ménagier de Paris)

"You said that you would not fail to improve yourself according to my teaching and correction, and you would do everything in your power to behave according to my wishes." [Prologue] "I urge you to bewitch and bewitch again your future husband, and...

Gina L. Greco is Associate Professor of French at Portland State University. Christine M. Rose is Professor of English at Portland State University.

A cookbook section contains over 350 recipes, and if many of them are taken from authorities such as the royal chef Taillevent, the author is quite opinionated about what works and what doesn't; he improves some recipes and offers others that seem to be his own. No man before or since has known more about running an affluent household, from keeping vermin out of linen to shopping in the market to caring for hunting hawks. The work has a peculiar tone, bossy yet tender, even elegiac. In their introduction the translators emphasize the husband's firm desire to subordinate his wife, but acknowledge that they found the book more appealing than they had originally expected.

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, University of Pittsburgh:

This new—and first complete—English translation of the Ménagier de Paris makes available to a broad audience one of the key texts for our understanding of late medieval mentalities. Its lively language, excellent introduction, and copious notes make this guide to good living in every sense (from moral instruction to recipes for delicious meals) useful to students, scholars, and anyone interested in medieval culture.

Laurie A. Finke, Kenyon College:

In a new, highly readable, and lively translation of an important medieval document, Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose have done a wonderful job of maintaining the integrity of the original text while rendering it into colloquial English. As a result, The Good Wife's Guide is eminently teachable. It is a cultural artifact in its own right, one that compiles a wide range of very different kinds of material, from moral exhortations to stories to practical instructions on household topics such as gardening and hawking to recipes-all brought together for a very specific purpose. It offers great insight into how both medieval books and households were put together.

Lynn Staley, Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the Humanities and Medieval and Renaissance Studies in the Department of English, Colgate University:

Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose bring to The Good Wife's Guide well-translated and dignified prose, intelligent commentary, and up-to-date scholarship. They have done a service to all those who teach medieval literature, women's literature, gender studies, and late medieval culture by having gracefully and carefully prepared a text of such significance and interest.